Packard Bell dot s & dot m netbooks hands-on & UK pricing

We first heard of the 11.6-inch Packard Bell dot m and 10.1-inch dot s netbooks back in early April. Whilst the European launch details were revealed, we didn’t have any news on the UK side of things. Well the official UK pricing details have now been announced – the smaller dot s will cost £299 whilst the dot m will cost £369 when it launches in July.

Acer-owned Packard Bell, has based the 11.6-inch dot m netbook on the Aspire One 751. If you compare them side by side, the keyboard and hinges look similar. Things are slightly different under the hood, with it powered by a AMD Athlon L1110 CPU and will support memory up to 2GB and a hard-drive up to 320GB. Other options for the dot m include an Intel Atom CPU, Windows Vista and 3G.

The 10.1-inch (1024 x 600) dot s looks similar to the Acer Aspire One D250. It will come with a N280 Atom CPU, 1GB RAM and a 160GB HDD. This unit will also come with optional 3G.

What Laptop was at the launch event and came away with some hands-on impressions. They found that the dot s doesn’t really stand out from the crowd, despite having a bright and colourful case. The keyboard was responsive along with the touchpad, however the latter is one of the smallest seen. The case uses textured plastics which is sturdy to the touch. The dot m shared similar styling to the dot s. The keyboard didn’t feel as good as the dot s, with a lack of definition. Performance was similar to most other netbooks. Pocket-Lint has quite a few pictures of both netbooks here.